Feelings of love, loss, and nostalgia are deeply interwoven in the practice of artist Bryana Bibbs. While caring for two simultaneously ailing grandparents in her Chicago home, Bibbs chronicled the periods before and after their deaths in weavings that incorporate objects from their lives. Just as one might pick up a pencil and paper to write through the difficult and overwhelming feelings of losing a loved one, she instead incorporated their clothing and beloved objects into her work, directly confronting the materials that once filled their days by interlacing them with threads and fabrics. Imbued with memories and the catharsis of making, these iterative works became the Journal Series.
We first contacted Bryana last year about an upcoming exhibition we were working on in Milwaukee that would explore issues surrounding mental health and, more broadly, the wellness of society. In one of our conversations about her work, she mentioned that “no one knows all it takes” to care for loved ones in their final days. The phrase instantly encapsulated our feelings about the show, and No One Knows All It Takes opened late this summer at the Haggerty Museum of Art.
I spoke again with Bibbs recently to discuss her practice and reflect on a series of exhibitions that have pulled her from Chicago to Milwaukee to Indianapolis.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Jobson: Very recently, you’ve been involved with three exhibitions. You had a solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center. You now have a significant amount of work in the show at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and you have work on view with the Lubeznik Center for the Arts. I’m curious, as you were juggling these or approaching these different exhibitions, are they related in some way? Are they separate? How have you approached each one as you’ve been working?
Bibbs: I think that they’re all related to one another because I feel like the work that I have in each show is very much about the aftermath of my grandparents passing away. The Cultural Center show is so much about the caregiving of my grandparents, and the recent work with the mobile gallery in Indiana, there are two Journal Series works that were from when I was teaching at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. That was such a special time for me because I never thought I would be teaching at such a historical and wonderful place. Being in that setting, all I did was think about my grandparents, and being around the water and reflecting was really helpful for me. And now the work at the Haggerty is basically just the continuation, to me, of the work that was in the Cultural Center.
Jobson: You’ve spoken a lot about grief and trauma and loss and how it’s present at this time in the majority of your work. Obviously, nobody seeks trauma or grief and loss. But, is there something more to it for you? Are grief and loss something that you are interested in, and that you may continue to explore, or is it more of this is a response to the circumstances of where you’ve found yourself?
My work has always been a response to what I’ve been going through in my life.
Bryana Bibbs
Bibbs: I think it’s a little bit of both. When I returned to my arts practice in 2019 from working in retail for a long time, I wasn’t making work related to the loss of a loved one. I was making work about mental health and my experience of going through domestic abuse. My work has always been a response to what I’ve been going through in my life. Did I ever think my grandparents would pass away? No, that’s not anything you think about in your day-to-day life. You don’t sit back and go, “this person eventually is never going to be here.” But now that they’re gone, it has unfortunately kind of consumed my brain. Now I’m like, oh, my parents, my dad’s siblings, my cousins, it’s become a reality now. And so because of that, I am interested in grief and trauma and what that means for me and what it also means for other people.
The way that my mom grieved her parents was so different than the way that I grieved her parents. She kicked into the “only child mode” of having to figure things out and make sure that everything was taken care of when they passed. But for me, I was like, oh my God. We just went through this crazy, traumatic, wild roller coaster for the last two years. And so I was able to sit in my grief a little bit more versus my mom. Whereas now that she’s had a little bit of distance between my grandfather’s passing and my grandmother’s passing, it’s starting to hit her a little bit more. Now she’s realizing she went through so much. So yeah, it’s a little bit of both. It’s about documenting my life but also trying to figure out why I grieve and respond to trauma in the way that I do.
Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art
Jobson: What do you do outside of the artwork to create balance in your life? I wonder if, in your case, the work itself is the way that you’re trying to find balance?
Bibbs: Yeah, I think the work is the balance for me. When I was working on the Journal Series, especially during the time my mom and I were taking care of my grandparents, I found when I was not sleeping well, [or when I would be up] helping my grandfather get to the bathroom and all that, I would pull out and start working on a Journal Series piece. If he needed something, I would go upstairs and help him out, stay up here for a little bit until he was ready to go back to bed. My sleep pattern was so jacked up during that time, but I would just keep working on the series.
Jobson: Take us back a little bit to when you first started working with fiber. Was it an immediate attraction?
Bibbs: Fiber, for me, started in undergrad at SAIC. I went into undergrad wanting to do abstract painting specifically, and I didn’t have the best time in that department. When I was picking out my second-year classes, I saw Intro to Fiber was on the list, and my grandfather actually used to quilt with his mother and his grandmother, but he never taught me how to quilt.
It’s about documenting my life but also trying to figure out why I grieve and respond to trauma in the way that I do.
Bryana Bibbs
Jobson: Your grandfather quilted. That just seems unusual to me?
Bibbs: It is, yeah! I remember we were in this house, in the room that’s now my studio space, and I asked him, “Did your sisters [quilt] with you?” He said yes, but he hadn’t done it in so long that he forgot the basics to everything.
In the Intro to Fiber class, that was one of the things they may have been able to teach us, but we didn’t learn that. We learned everything else, like how to knit and crochet. We did a little bit of embroidery, and then we got to floor loom weaving, and I thought I was going to hate it because there’s math involved. The assignment by our professor Jerry Bleem–who I love very much–was to do a 10-by-10-inch square. I remember that repetitive back-and-forth motion with the shuttle—something about it felt very different than painting. Painting feels very quick and sometimes abrupt, especially as an abstract painter.
Weaving slowed me down in ways that were necessary for me at that time in my life. So I just stuck with it and took probably all of the classes that Jerry taught. I took his Intro to Weaving class, and then his twist class, which teaches you how to apply yarns and spin yarns and all this other stuff. I think that slow processes of weaving and fiber in general clicked for me in some way.
Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art
Jobson: Can you tell us about the We Were Never Alone Project?
Bibbs: That started in 2020. I’m a survivor of domestic violence myself, unfortunately, and I started it right after a few really successful weaving workshops that happened in public settings and institutions. I felt comfortable and confident enough that I would be able to facilitate my own weaving workshops. The first one was at Compound Yellow in Oak Park. It was me and five or six other women. Although I didn’t know who the other participants were prior to doing the workshop, I wanted to create a free, open, weaving workshop where people could get together, and, if they felt comfortable enough, talk about their experiences.
After hearing how beneficial it was for those attendees, I decided to keep the workshops going, though I haven’t done one since early 2024 because I want to be mentally available for people. [Because of] everything that happened with my grandparents–and recently my dad went through a stroke–I needed to take a moment to reevaluate and find a space that aligns with the project to continue to host those workshops.
Jobson: Are the workshops instructional? Or does everyone come together and use it as a work, therapy, and sharing period?
Bibbs: The workshops are about two and a half to three hours long. I tell people why I started the project, my own personal experience, and remind them that they don’t have to share their experience if they don’t want to. They just need to be here and be present in the space with other people who are going through the same thing. I recognize there’s a lot of anxiety and maybe even a little bit of fear. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that, even though they signed up, they weren’t sure if they would come. Some people feel like their experience is not good enough or might be less than other people, which is really hard to hear. So sometimes we sit together and talk about things not related to our experiences. Sometimes we do talk about our experiences, and people ping off of one another and say, “That happened to me, too,” or “Something very similar happened to me.” All of these conversations are happening while they’re weaving.
The majority of the people who participate are first-time weavers. After I share my experience, I’ll demonstrate with a cardboard loom and explain the materials and how to plain weave. Some people bring found objects and materials that are significant to them, and while they’re weaving, they’re still actively listening to each other, not necessarily staring people in the face, but focused on working. Then they might pause and respond to whatever a person just said, which I think is really lovely.
Jobson: I was thinking about the act of making while working through trauma or working through whatever issues somebody might bring. Do you think it offers a sense of safety or a sense of comfort, or what do you think the weaving adds to that moment?
Bibbs: I think it’s the comfort. It goes back to why I enjoy weaving so much: the repetitive nature. You’re doing things with your hands. You’re responding to color in a different way and material in a different way, and it’s tactile. All of those things can be very comfortable for people, and I think it’s what makes the environment successful for people to share and respond.
Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art
Jobson: A newer aspect of your work is printmaking—specifically, pressure printing—which made an appearance at both the Haggerty Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center. Can you talk about the relationship or the juxtaposition of showing these two mediums together?
Bibbs: Yes, printmaking is super new. A friend of mine who lives in Milwaukee, Linda Marcus, inspired me to visit an open studio at Anchor Press, Paper and Print. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to print. She suggested printing with my own weavings. But, for whatever reason, I thought about printing with my grandfather’s clothing even though I didn’t know if that was possible or not. I visited AP3 with Linda a few weeks before my grandmother passed away. I really enjoyed printmaking, though I had no idea what I was doing, but I enjoyed the idea of taking their clothing and archiving it before me and my mom decided what to do with their belongings. When a loved one passes away, people either give their clothes to friends or family or just donate them. I just want to go through as many of their clothes and try to archive them before that happens.
Another thing that I really enjoy about it—and very much feels like it relates to my work—is this idea of materiality. I love material. I love working with found objects, and so the fact that I can make prints and give the viewer an idea of what the whole object was before I cut it up or do something with it feels very new and exciting to me.
Jobson: When you’re working, do certain fibers or colors or textures carry symbolic weight when you’re thinking about memory or absence and that sort of thing?
Bibbs: I spent a lot of time in my grandparents’ house as a kid, while my parents were working full-time jobs. I was here in the morning and after school, Monday through Friday, and spent a great deal of time in a living room painted “Priscilla pink.” The pink has become this iconic color in our family. I wouldn’t get rid of it anytime soon.
You mentioned loss and absence—in my recent work that’s going to be in a show at the Indianapolis Art Center, I’ve been thinking about white and blacks and grays, and that has a lot to do with absence and loss. The texture that I tend toward in my large-scale works is an over-spun, coily, twisted texture. It feels very comfortable to me; there’s something very tactile and fluffy in a way I really enjoy. It also references when I was a painter and used thick body mediums and acrylic modeling paste. I loved using all those different forms in painting.
“Priscilla Made.” Photo by Tonal Simmons, courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center
Jobson: Specifically with your weavings, is there an internal logic that you use when thinking about scale? A lot of the journal pieces are very small and page-like, but then you also make very large pieces. How do you treat scale when you’re conceiving a piece?
Bibbs: My most recent show [at the Chicago Cultural Center] is the first time I really thought about architecture. “Priscilla Made” references the seven front room windows of [my grandparents’] house. My piece titled “December182023 & August252024” references the doors to the bedrooms where my grandparents passed. Using those doors as a reference made a lot of sense to me and what I should do with the scale.
In more recent work, if I’m thinking about a certain story that I want to tell through colors and textures and forms, for whatever reason, I lean towards a 5 and a half to a maybe 7-foot piece. It still feels intimate like the Journal Series pieces do. But they can also feel slightly monumental, and the closer you get to it, there are all these textures, colors, and blends that viewers are sometimes attracted to when they view the pieces. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily get bigger. I like that kind of in-between.
Jobson: My favorite part of your current work is the fearlessness in incorporating found objects into your weaving–everything from a deck of cards, Disney ephemera, and things discarded in drawers. It seems like you can weave with anything. How do you pick what’s going into a work? And do you find it difficult to incorporate these things?
Bibbs: The objects I have used so far are from my grandparents. They’re discarded in drawers or cabinets and things like that, and they’re objects that I’ve forgotten about that maybe I used a lot as a kid, a little bit as a teenager, but haven’t used since. The deck of cards, for example, was so significant to me and our family history that it made sense to weave with. The same thing with the basement tile piece that’s in the Haggerty show. Not everyone thinks, “I can weave with a basement tile,” but it just made sense for me to use these materials as a way to mark time. [I want to] highlight my grandparents and their legacy and their story, and preserve their memory and my memories with them.
Even now, my uncle and two cousins sent me and my mom this beautiful bouquet of flowers marking a year since my grandmother passed away. I’m looking at them now, and they’re beautifully dried up. And, of course, I’m going to save them and weave with them, because it’s sad for me to see dried flowers and realize it’s been well over a year since she’s passed away. The Disney World stuff I used in the Journal Series, a lot of people have shared stories related to those weavings. I’ve heard “Oh, we’ve taken so many family vacations,” or, “Oh yeah, our family would take Disney trips,” and things like that. And I’m always finding new belongings. Actually, this morning, I found a bag of letters that my grandparents sent back and forth to each other in the 1950s.
Photo by Tonal Simmons, courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center
Jobson: Are these … spicy letters?
Bibbs: I think so! But, I’m not going to read them (laughs). I feel like that’s between them. I read only one of them. My grandmother was sick, and my grandfather said he hoped that she felt better. That’s as much as I need to know because my grandparents were very classy and private people. I always joke with my mom about how my grandmother could have been the queen because of how well she represented herself. And although I’m not going to read all of the letters, I keep thinking I need to do something with them because they feel so important to me.
Jobson: One last question, what do you have coming up next?
Bibbs: I have a show at the Indianapolis Art Center that closes December 14. Next, I’ll be doing a family day on November 8 with the Smart Museum for Theaster Gates’ Unto Thee exhibition, which I’m really excited about. And the following weekend, on November 15, I will be facilitating a weaving program for the Haggerty’s Wellness Retreat.
Find more from Bibbs on her website and Instagram.
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